Rip-Rap Religion, Zucchini, & Elvis in Kudzu

This column originally appeared in the March 18, 2008, Smith Mountain Eagle.

Howdy! Ida B. Peevish coming at you from Ida’s Salon of Beauty & Live Bait Shop in the heart of downtown Rock Bottom, US of A, where spring is about to happen after a couple of false starts this winter, so we are running our “Easter Chick” special. If you’re a chick who wants to look extra special for Easter, some on down and we’ll fix you up. Remember that on Easter, you will be seen at church by lots of folks who only come once or twice a year so they likely don’t see you all that often. If you don’t want them to have the wrong impression about how you generally look, you’d better take advantage of our special. Everyone else is, so you’ll look bad by comparison if you don’t. Now lessee what we got in the mail:

Dear Ida B. We are about to return from Florida to our Slick Water Lake condo in time for Easter and look forward to attending services at Our Lady of the Rip-Rap. We have heard that some changes have been made at Our Lady. Can you tell us what they are?—Wants to Know

Dear Wanting: Father Rocky Shore was just in Ida’s Salon of Beauty & Live Bait Shop the other day to get his moustache trimmed, and he is proud to announce the upgrades that the church decor committee has made to the confessionals. It seems that some folks were worried that what they confessed might be overheard and possibly recorded by others, so Our Lady of the Rip-Rap now features state of the art touch screen confessionals with stadium seating that features cup-holders for your communion wine. All you got to do is go in, lean back and study the screen in front of you until you see some sins or transgressions you might have committed. Then just touch the screen by each sin you have committed since the last time you confessed and your confession goes straight to Father Rocky Shore’s computer. He will text message back your penance or absolution or whatever. He says he hopes that you will not be too distracted by the ads that appear at the top of the screen, but the church gets a good deal for running them. Also, it is not necessary to touch the screen more than once for each sin. Even if you have committed some several times, just touch once no matter how proud you are of them. Otherwise it jams up the machine. Before long, the committee hopes to have all the confessionals wi-fi complaint, so you can surf the net while you try to remember what sins you committed.

Father Shore also reports that communion has picked up considerably now that parishioners are offered a choice between domestic and imported communion wine.
If you have been gone awhile, you do need to know that Our Lady of the Rip-Rap now offers reserved seating, so if you go in and see a pew that has a plaque with somebody’s name on it, that means it has already been reserved for the season. I suggest you call the Rip-Rap ticket office and make your reservations now. Otherwise, the ticket scalpers in the parking lot will charge you a lot more than you probably want to pay.

Finally, the service planning committee unanimously voted that this year’s Easter sunrise service will be held at 10:00 a.m. instead of the actual sunrise because nobody wanted to get up that early.

Dear Ida B. This morning, I got a call from my wife while she was shopping at the Rock Bottom All-Mart. She said they had a sale on zucchinis and she was thinking about getting one on account she had never tried one before. She asked me what I thought. Well, naturally, I said “Do whatever you want, honey,” knowing that she’d do it anyway and there weren’t no call to give her something else to fuss about. I have seen lots of pictures of young gals in those zucchini things in the swimsuit issue of a magazine down at the barber shop, and I sure do admire how they look. But the problem is that my wife ain’t no spring chicken anymore, and come summer when she puts that zucchini on, a lot of her is gonna be falling out of it. When we go to the beach for our vacation, I’m worried that a wave might knock it off. What do I do when she puts it on to model for me? I just know she’s gonna ask me if it makes her look fat, and I can only lie so much.—Worried

Dear Worried: As soon as we got your e-mail down here at Ida’s Salon of Beauty and Live Bait Shop, we commenced to laughing. Then we discussed the problem. Then we laughed some more. All I can say is that you don’t really have a problem. Well, you do have problems—but not the one you asked about.

Dear Ida B. I live out in Kudzu Canyon so I am surrounded by the stuff. I got to studying how the kudzu sometimes looks like people and stuff. Just the other day, I swear I seen Elvis in the kudzu with his guitar and everything. Right next to him was Dolly Parton and Abraham Lincoln and a grizzly bear. I am thinking about buying up all the land around here with kudzu on it and opening the first kudzu museum. What do you think?—Andre P. Newer

Dear Stupid: I have to admit the idea kinda grows on you, but you got to consider that kudzu grows over at least half the county—and maybe more by the time you read this. Who is gonna pay for what they can see for free every time they look out their window? You might see Elvis in the kudzu now, but by tomorrow morning, he ain’t gonna look like himself. The problem with kudzu is that it don’t stay still long enough for you to admire it for what you think it looks like. If you got money to spend, come on down to Ida’s Salon of Beauty & Live Bait Shop and invest in a bucket of bait.

That’s it for this go-round. Remember, you get what you pay for, talk is cheap, and my advice is free, except when it's in my book.

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